The behavior of electricity has long been likened to that of liquid: it flows in a current, and can be turned on and off in a closed system. So it’s not surprising that we talk of getting juice for a phone’s a battery by plugging it into...
Campaign once drew fire when applied to elections. Nineteenth-century usage writers Richard Grant White and C.W. Bardeen objected that a presidential campaign wrongly borrowed military language, preferring contest instead. White called it “inflamed...
A simile is a rhetorical device that describes by comparing two different things or ideas using the word like or as. But what makes a good simile? The 1910 book Fifteen Thousand Useful Phrases, by Yale public-speaking instructor Grenville Kleiser...
Someone who’s being rude or pushy might be said to “have more nerves than a cranberry merchant.” This idiom is probably a variation on the phrase “busier than a cranberry merchant in November,” which relates to the...
When hiking off-trail, it’s important to keep an eye on where you’ve been as well as where you’re going. Otherwise, you run the risk of what experienced hikers call being “ledged out”, which means you’ve descended...
The idiom “two heads are better than one” doesn’t exist in quite the same form in Spanish, but there is a variation that translates to, “four eyes are better than two.” In Hungarian, there’s a phrase that’s...